


Swimming Lessons

by DaughterOfHypnos



Category: Fairytales, The Frog Prince - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-13 23:15:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11770488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaughterOfHypnos/pseuds/DaughterOfHypnos
Summary: A spoiled princess meets a frog who gives zero fucks about what she thinks of him.





	Swimming Lessons

Once upon a time there lived a good and wise king who was married to a good and wise queen, even though she never gets mentioned in this story because fuck women, I guess? Anyway the king and queen had many daughters, all of whom went on adventures to save kingdoms from evil and rescue heroes in distress.

But this is not a story about any of them.

This is the story of the youngest princess who had ended up quite spoiled. No one was sure how it happened, but while all her sisters were out adventuring and rescuing the youngest princess ended up spoiled rotten by both her parents and the castle staff. 

So the princess is sixteen years old and she’s playing in the forest. (For some reason I always imagined her younger, but for the sake of not creating pedophiles where they're neither needed nor wanted she’s now sixteen.) The princess is not quite sure where she is, she got lost on the way, but there’s a nice pond and the weather is good and she’s not worried. She’s playing with her little golden ball. The golden ball is important to her because it is a toy that has been passed down through her sisters. Each sister left a little bit of her own magic on the ball just by proximity to it and so by the time it reached the youngest princess it was steeped in family magic and the joy that children imprint on their favorite toys. Since she was the youngest, the princess had no one to pass the ball onto and so it had become forever hers by default. 

And then it rolls into the pond.

The princess cannot reach the bottom of the pond with her hand and she does not know how to swim, because she threw a tantrum and was allowed to quit her swimming lessons after just one day. Left with no other options the princess begins to cry, big wailing sobs that, in the castle, would send the five nearest servants running to help her. But she’s alone in the woods, there are no servants. Ten minutes later feeling a bit dehydrated and realizing that there is no one coming to help her, the princess stops crying and slumps to the ground. She is genuinely upset about the loss of her ball, of course, but she’s also afraid to go home and have her sisters make snide comments about how she could have avoided this if she’d just kept up with her swim lessons.

Ten minutes later a frog comes hopping out of the weeds near the pond.

“Hello, Princess,” the frog says.

The princess is somehow not surprised by a talking frog, because apparently that’s a normal thing where she’s from. So, good for them.

“I can’t help but notice you seem to have lost something in my pond,” the frog hops closer to the princess.

“Didn’t you hear me crying?” The princess pouts. The frog nods but makes no move towards the pond.

“Um, can you get my ball,” The princess looks into the frogs black eyes for a moment before adding, “please.” 

“If I do this for you princess, you have to do something for me.”

The princess is pissed for a moment. Doesn’t this frog know who she is?! But she knows he does and as he continues to stare at her with those blank, black eyes she deflates. Her sisters have told her about this, about making deals during quests. This is hardly a quest, but at least she knows not to make a deal until she knows the terms. Apparently she’s listened more to her sisters’ stories than she thought.

“What do you want?”

“If I return your ball to you, you must allow me to sit beside your plate at the dinner table and you must feed me off of your little golden plate and let me drink from you little golden cup and you must let me sleep next to you on your pillow so that in the morning I may return to my pond able to say that I have spent a night as a royal frog.”

The princess isn’t super excited about the sleeping on the pillow clause, but there’s nothing in the agreement she absolutely can’t do so she agrees. The frog then dives to the bottom of the pond and gets her ball.

Once her ball is back in hand, it occurs to the princess that she never agreed to transport the frog back to her home, so she wishes him safe travels and runs off, sure that he’ll never be able to hop all the way to the castle.

 

That night, the doorman hears a whisper of a knock on the door. He considers ignoring it, but the good and wise king and queen treat their servants well and all of the men and women in the castle took great pride in their work, so the doorman decided that on the off chance there was someone on the other side he’d better open the door.

It is, as you might’ve guessed, the frog. He politely asks the doorman if there is any way he could see the king. The doorman, surprised only by the eloquence and manners of the frog, not his ability to speak, asks what about. The frog tells him of his deal with the princess and the doorman sighs. Every servant in the palace knows how spoiled the princess is, and they know they’d helped to make her that way and somehow none of them can seem to stop it at this point. 

So the doorman, with hope in his heart regarding a polite frog and a spoiled princess, goes to the steward who hears the story with the same hope as the doorman and takes the frog to the king. The king nods thoughtfully as the frog speaks, then brings him into the dining hall. Not saying anything, he simply puts the frog down next to his youngest daughter’s plate and goes back to his seat. The princess herself sighs and slumps in her chair.

“So, what’s with the frog?” One of her sisters asks. The king levels a look at the princess that forces her to explain the whole thing and there are, as she had expected, several digs about quitting swimming lessons.

‘I was four!’ She wants to scream, but instead she picks up a piece of broccoli and holds it out to the frog.

I don’t know what frogs eat, aside from flies, but assume that the cook, upon hearing the story from the steward, sends out food that made the frogs little stomach sing with joy, broccoli notwithstanding. And the water he drinks from the princess’s little golden goblet is cold and clear and he is in awe of it, for the water of his pond is quite murky and muddy. 

“Do I have to share my pillow?” The princess whines that night after she changes into her nightgown. The frog sits on one side of her pillow and simply nods and settles even deeper into the pillow, so the princess huffs and lays on the other side. At one point she makes the mistake of rolling over and gets a face full of frog, but otherwise the night goes well. 

When she wakes up the next morning, the frog is gone.

 

By the time the princess finds the frog’s clearing again she is covered in sweat and dirt from the forest and she is pretty sure the squirrels ripped a huge chunk off the back of her dress. The squirrels of this particular forest are bloodthirsty savages, the lot of them, and they often try to eat people. 

The princess stands before the frog’s pond, chest heaving and hair falling in her eyes, and when she doesn’t immediately see him she throws back her head and lets out a scream. Not the wailing tantrum of the day before, or the pretty tears she sometimes uses on visiting dignitaries to make them give her the best gifts from foreign lands, but a scream of actual anger. The kind of scream we all need to utilize sometimes, when we are just so done with our day. 

The frog tumbles out of the weeds at the sound and the princess points at him.

“You!” She yells. “It is rude to leave your host’s home without saying thank you and good bye.”

“Why princess, I didn’t know you cared,” the frog smirks. (Can frogs smirk? Whatever, this one can.) 

“I don’t!” She’s still yelling, “but as your host it was my job to make sure you didn’t get eaten by a stork. As I can see that you haven’t, good day!” 

The princess turns to go, but she stops when she hears a great whooshing sound from behind her, like the wind is dancing to techno music. Then there is a great light, and when she turns around there is a young man standing there instead a frog. He is perhaps a year younger than the princess and his eyes are somehow exactly the same, though they are now blue instead of black and very expressive. They are currently expressing joy.

“Thank you princess,” the young man says.

“I—what the fuck just happened?” The princess gasps.

“I’m a prince and you just helped break the spell cast on me.”

“But why…”

“Well, I used to be spoiled and bratty like you—“

“I’m not bratty!” The princess interrupts, but the knowing look the young man gives her shut her up.

“And my father was getting sick of my ‘antics’ as he called them. So the court wizard suggest spelling me into a frog to teach me a lesson, and not allowing me to turn back until I taught it to another spoiled royal. They spelled this clearing so I’d be safe from predators and then left me here. That was about…six months ago? I think.” The prince shrugs as he finishes his tale. The princess gapes.

“That’s fucking psychotic.”

“Basically yeah,” the prince agrees. “The court wizard’s always been a slight bit evil and my dad, well, he’s crazy cakes.”

“Oh my god. Okay. Well, you should come home with me and we’ll let them know you’re back. Wait…you’re back because you taught me the lesson?”

The prince smiles and shrugs again the princess curses.

“Damn it, damn it, damn it, my sisters are never going to let me live this down.”

 

Back at the castle everyone agrees that the prince should not go back to his home, because it is full of crazy people. Instead, the king says he can train as a knight until such a time as he and the youngest princess are ready to marry, a sentence that causes the two to turn bright red and sputter. After a moment, the king winks and says, “if they so desire.” The princess does indeed have to endure months of ribbing from all of her sisters. She endures it silently and patiently, to everyone’s surprise. And though she is still quite vocal about what she feels, she never throws another temper tantrum.

But she does take petty joy from the shock on everyone’s faces the first time she shows them that the prince taught her to swim.


End file.
